As is well known, search engines such as those provided by Google™ and Yahoo™ use “web crawlers” to locate new or modified data in the form of web pages that are accessible via the World Wide Web. The content of these pages is analyzed, keywords are extracted from the pages, and the keywords are added to a search index, which links to a list of web pages that contain a particular word. A weight or rank for the web page can be generated on the basis of the number of times that word occurs on the web page, and stored in the index. A variety of other parameters can be factored into the web-page rank, including the number of times other search users have clicked on the link to that web page, how extensively that web page is linked to from other web pages, personal reviews and ratings of web pages or sites, or on the basis of an amount that a given web site is willing to pay for a particular ranking. Web pages can include data relating to products and services, and can thus serve as a medium for advertising.
As described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,361, web site promoters can control their placement in search result listings so that their listings are prominent in searches that are relevant to the content of their web site. This is achieved by means of an on-line marketplace, in which companies selling products, services, or information bid in an open auction environment for positions on a search result list generated by an Internet search engine. Since content providers must pay for each click-through referral generated through the search result lists generated by the search engine, there is an incentive to select and bid on those search keywords that are most relevant to their web site offerings. In known systems implementing this approach, content providers typically input the search keywords and bid criteria via a user interface, the user interface being operated under the control of the search facility so that data entered by the content providers can subsequently be used to rank search results on the basis of their bids.
Use of search engines to find data of interest is currently not in question because in most cases search queries are received from terminals that are fixedly connected to the Internet (either directly, or via one or several network portions), and of course the transmission of data within the Internet—on a per request basis—is free. However, with the advent of widespread deployment of radio networks such as cellular and non-cellular networks (using e.g. Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technology, Wideband Code Division Multiplex Access (WCDMA); Code Division Multiplex Access (CDMA), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax)) and/or unlicensed network portions (such as Wireless LANs and Bluetooth technologies), search requests are increasingly being received from terminals connected to wireless networks. Unlike the transmission of data within fixed-line networks, the transmission of data within mobile networks is typically metered on a per transmission basis. As a result, mobile terminals are faced with hitherto unseen costs for accessing sites on the basis of search results generated by search engines, which calls into question the likely take-up of search engine offerings by users of personal mobile devices.
In order to increase the likelihood of users accessing data relating to search results it would be attractive to involve the content providers in the delivery of data.